Saying goodbye
by RovKie
Summary: The battle has finished, the war is over. The boy who lived, lives. But does he really want to still live, after all he has been through?


**I don't own the HP universe, nor do I make any money of it. And my name isn't J.K. Rowling. - Edited for spelling mistakes.  
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><p>It was over, finally over.<p>

Looking around, it was hard to be happy about it. The toll had been too high. Fred, Tonks, Lupin... Harry stood there looking at their bodies while the Weasley's were comforting each other. Harry felt numb, walking through the rows of dead or badly harmed friends. Some of them wouldn't survive the night, judging by their wounds. It was when he passed a fourth year Gryffindor girl, with her blood gushing out of several cuts, silently whimpering in the arms of McGonagall, that the unsettling feeling in his stomach took over. She would die within the hour, everybody knew that, and nobody could do anything about it. He ran out of the Great Hall, hands over his mouth, tears in his eyes.

He made it out of the castle, and while emptying his stomach next to the stairs at the entrance, only one thought formed in his mind.

"_This shouldn't have happened. Too many innocent people died. Too many people with their whole life in front of them. And it's all because of me."_

He didn't want to go back inside. Inside reminded him of all the pain, of the hurting, of the meaninglessness. Harry instead took off over the grounds. The grounds had always been able to calm him down, of bringing a sense of peacefulness over him.

Not this time though. As he walked over the grass havocked by the battle, his sense of despair only got worse. Brown and black patches in the grass where it had burned from spells that had missed, red patches from where they hadn't missed... Uprooted trees, side to side with wooden sticks the size of a human that the giants had used, next to the humans they had been used on... it was too much.

Not all bodies had been removed yet from the battleground. Enemy bodies lay side to side with allied bodies. It hit him hard, the uselessness of it all. So many lives had been taken, and for what? Anything was better than this. He should have just handed himself over to voldemort, and most of these people would still be alive. They might not have had the life they have wanted, but at least they would still be alive.

As Harry walked between the fallen, he saw some people trying to gather the bodies, looking for those that still could be saved. He didn't have the strength to help them, he could hardly muster the strength to look around him at the consequence of so much evil. But he forced himself to look at every fallen person, comrade or opponent. Each life had been one too many. Several times he had to stop to gag, although his stomach didn't contain anything anymore. Nothing but pain, coming from his deepest core.

While Harry walked on, Hermione stood in the Great Hall, comforting Ron who was silently crying on her shoulder, mourning the death of his brother. As she was holding him in her arms, a sense of dread crept upon her. She started looking around the Great Hall, looking for one person in particular. He wasn't there. The last time she had seen him was when he was walking away from them, looking to the bodies strewn around on the floor.

When Ron's face came up, he saw the look of panic in her eyes. "Harry?" was the only word he said. At her nod, he continued, "Go and look for him, who knows what he would do to himself". When she prepared herself to refuse and tell him that she should be here with the Weasley's, comforting and suffering with them, Ron interrupted her before she could even start. "Go and find him, I can't have one more of my friends dying, and he's capable of killing himself with that sense of guilt he drags along. I would look for him myself, but I can't. Sorry, I really can't..." At that comment, fresh tears started to flow over his face. Hermione felt her tears stain her eyes and embraced Ron, then gently kissed him on his lips. "Thank you. I will be back soon. And I'll bring him back, I promise". She turned, and ran off towards the exit, knowing that if she looked back to all the despair and death, she would have stopped and collapsed on the floor herself.

The outside air should have done her good, but instead it was reeking of death, fire and decay. It was awfull. She knew that Harry would look up the grounds, as it always was his favourite spot, walking towards the lake. But this, no, this wouldn't calm him down. She feared for him, as she started running haphazardly through the piles of bodies in the grounds. Suddenly she noticed a familiar face, tending to the wounds of a fallen witch. "_Not that it will help,_" Hermione thought to herself, "_the wounds are too deep, she won't survive. But at least she will die a bit more comfortable_".

"Lavender, have you seen Harry? He has run off and I fear he will do something to himself". Lavender turned from her hunched over position, and Hermione gasped from surprise. The girl that had once held the attention of most males at Hogwarts, now sported a big gash diagonally over her face, the remnant of a curse that luckily enough had been badly casted. Otherwise she wouldn't have been standing there anymore.

"Harry, yeah, I think I saw him. He walked off to in the direction of the lake. Isn't that him?" she said, while raising her hand and pointing behind Hermione. As Hermione turned to look in the direction indicated by Lavender, she could see a small figure, making his way through burned grounds, occasionally stopping to bend over and retch. It was Harry, and thank goodness, he was still alive.

She took off running towards him, catching up rather quickly with his slowly moving form. But he was still about a hundred yards away, and while she was running, her eyes grew wide from what she was seeing. She opened her mouth, but couldn't make a noise. When her scream finally left her mouth, she closed her eyes. "God no, please don't let it be too late!"

Harry couldn't take it anymore. The pain was overwhelming. All this wouldn't have happened if not for _him_. After all, Voldemort hunted _him_, attacked the castle because of _him_. It was _him_ who brought Voldemort back at the cementary, _his_ blood was the reason that evil returned and destroyed all these people. It would have been better had he died the first time, as any normal person would have done. Or even the second time, only a few hours ago. But no, _he_ couldn't die, not even when he was supposed to. And _this_ was the consequence...

Loathing himself for all he saw, he passed an old burned hat. Battered as it was, Harry recognised it instantly. The sorting hat.

An idea formed in his head. An idea that would make his pain go away. He wouldn't have to suffer this unbearable pain anymore, he could be amongst them who he loved and that weren't present here anymore.

Without thinking Harry lifted up the hat, and stuck his hand in it. Pulling it back out of the hat, he was holding the sword of Gryffindor. Only a true Gryffindor could summon the sword, but he wondered if his next action would be considered courageous, the trademark of a Gryffindor.

As he raised the sword, strengthened by the blood of the Basilisk, he suddenly swung the tip down, hitting himself straight in the stomach. It wasn't a very hard swing, and it normally wouldn't have killed him, but he knew the Basilisk blood would do its work rapidly.

As he fell on his knees, seeing his blood drip on the already red and black earth beneath him, he heard a scream behind him. An all too familiar scream. One that he couldn't burn out of his mind since they had been locked up in Malfoy mansion and Bellatrix had tortured Hermione. He turned to see a tangled bush of curly brown hair rush towards him & engulf him.

Hermione reached him while he kneeled on the ground, blood dripping out of his wound. She had recognised the sword, she knew that there was nothing she could do, Harry would die. Fawkes, the only one who could save Harry, had disappeared in flames when his master had died, and with Fawkes, their only chance of keeping Harry alive right now, had burned up.

Hermione held Harry, like she never held him in his life before. She knew it would be the last time. At last, she untangled herself from him, and laid him gently on the ground, while her tears stricken brown eyes bore into his green ones.

"Why Harry? Why now?"

Harry was at a loss for words. He had been so consumed by his pain, by his sadness for whom he had lost, that he had forgotten who he still had, the people that were still worth living for. But he felt the warm sensation spreading quickly through his veins, and knew that time was limited to say goodbye.

"Hermione, I couldn't... I just couldn't anymore. It was too much. But I will be going to a better place, a more peaceful place. And I will be watching over you, and over Ron. Tell him I'm sorry for doing this to him, and I'm sorry for doing this to you... But it's done, no way back. Hey, I'll be watching over you both. I hope that... that you'll have a long and happy life together. I really hope so..."

He died there that night, in her arms, lying in a puddle of blood, on earth scorched by magic and flames, and marked by blood. The sun came out at the exact same moment when he closed his eyes, and his last breath escaped. Hermione didn't see the sun, she was found hours later, her face still buried in his hair, crying as she had never cried before, not wanting to let go of his now limp body.

It took hours before she was able to say anything, days before she was able to eat or speak one sentence without bursting into tears.

They say time heals all wounds, but it's a lie. It makes it easier to live with them, but they're still there. And they hurt the most whenever you think they're getting better.

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><p>Decades later, Hermione said goodbye to little Rose at the Hogwarts express. Ron wasn't there, he was needed at the Ministry, but he had said his goodbye to Rose and Harry in the morning at breakfast.<p>

When she walked back from Kings Cross, Hermione was sunken in thoughts. Seeing the Hogwarts Express brought back so many emotions. Emotions that were always there, hiding under the surface, to come out of their hiding place whenever she least expected them, to make sure she was never fully happy. She couldn't be, she wasn't complete...

Oh, Ron had been good to her, after the war he had realised how much the people close to him meant to him. And how quickly one could lose them. So he didn't want to spend his time fighting with Hermione. He had handled her with the uttermost respect since that day. Eventually he had proposed and she had said yes. They had a beautiful wedding in the Weasley garden. But she wasn't fully complete. She had never told him, but she had cried on her wedding day, when getting ready in the bathroom. She missed Harry, so incredibly much. It had hurt that he couldn't be there on that day. That day that was supposed to be a happy day.

Then the kids came. First Harry was born, and the name was decided without words, from the moment they knew it would be a boy. Later on Rose followed, and their second daughter and last child was called Lilly, after Harry's mother. Still she didn't feel complete. It wasn't that she was unhappy. And her children and Ron meant the world for her. But she wasn't complete.

Something had died within her that day on the grounds. Something so strong that she didn't know she had it. Not until it was gone. And now, there was nothing left to do than wait, wait until they would be complete again. She, Ron and _he_. Harry. The person that had been like a brother, and so much more. She had never loved him like she loved Ron, but she had loved him differently, she had loved him _more_. And then that had abruptly fallen away. Now she was just a shadow of herself, her life was just a shadow of what it should have been.

She would never kill herself, she had Ron and the kids to live for. But it didn't mean that she wasn't counting the days, hoping that one day, she would meet him again. One day she would be complete again...


End file.
